CCAPP is proud to announce Chiara Salemi (MIT) and Carl Fields (MSU) as the winners of the 2020 Price Prize in Cosmology and Astrophysics!

Chiara’s research focuses on searches for low-mass axions, one of the best-motivated dark matter candidates.  She works on the ABRACADABRA and DM Radio experiments, which use a novel toroidal lumped element design to look for the coherent interactions of the field of dark matter axions around us.  As a part of a small team, she built and ran the prototype detector, ABRACADABRA-10 cm, which demonstrated the technique’s viability and set the best direct limits on axion-like particles with masses around a neV.

Carl's research encompasses astrophysical sources of gravitational waves, stellar nucleosynthesis, and multi-dimensional simulations of core-collapse supernova explosions and their massive-star progenitors.  His work utilizes multi-physics simulation frameworks such as FLASH to produce multi-dimensional supernova progenitor models.  In 2020, he showed that one-dimensional models may be greatly underestimating O-shell convection speeds, a result that has crucial implications for multi-messenger signals of supernovae.

About the Prize

The Dr. Pliny A. and Margaret H. Price Prize recognizes research excellence and exceptional promise in areas related to CCAPP initiatives. Two recipients are selected annually by the CCAPP Science Board based on a review of their research in the areas of cosmology and astroparticle physics. CCAPP hosts Prize recipients for a week during which they give a Price Prize seminar on their research, establish long-term collaborative relationships, and receive a $1,500 honorarium.

Together, Steve Price and his wife Jill Levy created and endowed the Dr. Pliny A. and Margaret H. Price Prize, with generous gifts in honor of Steve's parents beginning in 2009.